Local landscaping company suing the city

January 2, 2011

By

DONNA KENNY KIRWAN

PAWTUCKET â€” A local landscaping company has filed a lawsuit against the city of Pawtucket alleging that city officials failed to put numerous landscaping contracts out for public bid.
D.M. Bruzzi Landscape Co. Inc. filed a complaint in Superior Court on Dec. 28 naming the city as a defendant, along with city Parks Superintendent William Mulholland, Finance Director Ronald Wunschel, and Purchasing Director Joseph Roque.
The complaint alleges that over a course of years, the defendants failed to submit for public bidding city landscaping contracts greater than $5,000 each, including, but not limited to, contracts related to 46 purchase orders.
The complaint also alleges that the defendants' failure to competitively and publicly bid these city contracts â€śdeprived the plaintiff of multiple business opportunitiesâ€ť and that the plaintiff â€śsuffered damages as a result of the defendants' conduct.â€ť
The attorney for D.M. Bruzzi Landscape Co. is Mark McBurney, who has in recent months accused the city of several other violations involving the awarding of municipal contracts as well as violations to the Access to Public Records Act. Most of the complaints stem from a separate lawsuit that has been filed by a group of parents and the ACLU against the city alleging that parochial schools get preferential treatment over public schools in the use of municipal-owned playing fields.
The attorney general's office ruled twice that the city violated the Access to Public Records Act (APRA) in complaints to the ongoing playing fields dispute, and also agreed to pursue a third such complaint. The attorney general's office, however, declined to pursue McBurney's request for an investigation into 46 purchase orders totaling almost $500,000 to see if there are violations of state purchasing laws.
Additionally, on Dec. 29, McBurney filed a joint complaint with college student Gabriella Calise in Superior Court against the city on another Access to Public Records Act complaint. In this case, McBurney said that the city had denied Calise's request for a copy of the city's rules and regulations regarding the use of city parks and athletic fields that was last in effect before Jan. 1, 2010.
The city had cited the fact that it had not yet adopted the written â€śSupplemental Rules and Regulationsâ€ť regarding the use of city fields before January 1, 2010 as the grounds for denying the request. However, McBurney argued that it wasn't the â€śSupplemental Rules and Regulationsâ€ť that Calise had asked for, and that the defendant's response failed to adequately address her request.

Comments

For over 50 years "The Police Tow" has been a scam in Pawtucket and other cities in Rhode Island.
People are charged outlandish prices for storage.
Does the Tax Assessor set value of land by income produced by these parcels of land?
Many Tow Companies park cars from Police Tows on land they say is not owned by them.
In many cases land is owned by a relative or friend.

Standard Operating Procedure for Pawtucket. We recently broke down in the travel lane of Rte 1A and were trying to call AAA to get the vehicle towed. The police showed up and insisted that they had to have it towed as a police tow. When my husband protedted and tried to get the vehicle running, he was arrested for disorderly conduct and the car was towed and impounded until we paid $300 to get it out. They wouldn't even tell us where the car was and how much it was going to cost to get it out. We will avoid traveling in Pawtucket unless we absoluetley have to and certainly won't travel there to shop or do any business there.